


Rusalka

by jinkandtherebels



Category: Naruto
Genre: M/M, Rusalka (Water Spirit)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 05:49:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21069911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jinkandtherebels/pseuds/jinkandtherebels
Summary: When he was younger Shisui thought it was the forest that frightened them all.





	Rusalka

**Author's Note:**

> For Day Five: "Fantasy".
> 
> Fun fact - The Decemberists are one of my favorite bands, and I actually found them because of an ItaShi fic back in the day. (Pretty sure it was Quillslinger's "The Colder Water"?) Thus, this fic is brought to you by the song "Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes", which is gorgeous and atmospheric and hopefully lent some of those qualities to the story! Enjoy!

.

_Come down, little darling, oh farther come in_

_For the deeper the water, the sweeter the sin_

.

When he was younger Shisui thought it was the forest that frightened them all.

This made little sense to him, since the forest was full of trees to climb and sticks to play swords with, and the dark cool shade of trees to nap in after a day working in the fields. It was also where the hunting was done when they needed meat, where they foraged when the crops didn’t grow as well as they hoped.

He didn’t understand until one day, when he came home from playing under the tree shade with his sister, and his mother gripped him by the shoulders until he thought she would leave bruises there in the shapes of her fingers.

“Play at the edge of the trees if you must,” she said, something frightened and frantic in her voice. “But don’t go too deep. And _never_ go near the river, Shisui, do you hear me? Never the river.”

So it was the river that scared them, not the forest itself. Shisui could understand that a bit more, though he loved to splash around in the goose pond himself; fast-rushing water could be dangerous, even if it wasn’t all that deep. The villagers still spoke about the last boy who’d wandered off and drowned, when they thought Shisui wasn’t listening. He thought it must have happened when he was very small. Sometimes he thought he even remembered another little boy he used to play with before his sister came along, but he knew that was probably just his imagination.

.

Shisui might never be the strongest of boys, but he knew he was faster than any of them. The bigger boys, the mean ones, knew how fast he was and tried to box him in, but they too were frightened of the forest and the river, had been warned by their parents and scolded with pinches and slaps if they got too close.

So naturally, it was the best place for Shisui to run as a last resort.

As he ducked, panting, beneath another low-hanging branch, he thought about his mother’s warning. He winced at the thought of what she would do to him when she found out he’d ventured this deep—but, Shisui reasoned, it had to be better than the beating he’d get at the other boys’ hands.

The woods around him had gone quiet, except for the labored sound of his own breathing. Shisui took a chance and stopped, listening for the sound of footsteps crashing after him. He didn’t hear anything.

The relief lasted for about a second before he realized he’d never been to this part of the forest before. Shisui strained his ears for any sound of the village or the harvesters, anything familiar.

He heard nothing, not even squirrels rustling in the leaves. Not even birds crying their song.

Nothing, he realized, except for the sound of rushing water.

Shisui’s throat felt suddenly dry and tight, as if he hadn’t drunk anything in days. A sip of water might calm him down enough that he could remember the way home. He followed the sound of the water and before long he was standing before the river.

The sun seemed almost hidden in this clearing, blocked by the thick canopy of trees overhead. The river itself didn’t seem all that threatening when he looked at it, though the water was so dark it was almost black; it just bubbled along gently as small rivers did. He couldn’t see where it started or where it ended. He couldn’t see the bottom either.

All the same, he was thirsty. Remembering his mother’s words again, Shisui made sure to fist one hand deep in the soil of the riverbank before he bent down to take a drink. The water was cool and refreshing and somehow tasted better than any water he’d ever had, good enough that Shisui closed his eyes as he swallowed.

When he opened them again, his reflection stared back at him from beneath the surface of the water.

Only it wasn’t _his_ reflection, he realized slowly. It was the face of another boy around his own age, black-haired and black-eyed, only his eyes were shaped differently and his hair was longer and straighter.

Just as Shisui was deciding whether to be more curious or afraid, the young boy’s voice spoke in his head.

_Are you lost?_ it asked.

“Yes,” he answered out loud. Somehow it made perfect sense that a creature of the forest would be able to speak like this. “Do you know the way back to the village?”

The voice was quiet for a moment. Shisui had assumed that a creature of the forest would also know how to _leave_ the forest—they always seemed to have a good sense of direction in the stories—but maybe he’d have to find his own way after all.

_Will you come back?_ the voice asked suddenly.

Shisui bit his lip. His mother would hang him upside-down by his toes, the way she liked to threaten sometimes, but the river boy’s face looked so lonely that it nudged away his fear.

“I’ll come back,” he said. “If you tell me the way.”

_Do you promise?_ the voice insisted.

“I promise,” Shisui said.

.

He returned to the village to find it in an uproar. The other boys had told their elders that Shisui had gone running into the forest, and the men were in the middle of organizing a search when Shisui stepped out from the tree line. He didn’t understand the fuss at first—the sun hadn’t even gone down yet—but then he remembered the dead boy who had been about his age, and felt guilty anyway.

His mother didn’t hang him upside-down by his toes, only made it harder for him to sit comfortably for a while. And once she’d stopped crying she’d forbidden him from going anywhere near the forest, not even to the very edge.

Shisui felt bad about breaking his promise to the river boy, but he felt worse about making his mother cry, so he promised to stop going close to the woods.

And anyway, he thought as he settled down to sleep, the river boy wouldn’t miss him. He hadn’t even looked happy when Shisui promised to come back; if anything he’d looked even sadder than before.

.

Years passed and Shisui kept his promise to his mother. Even after she died of fever he kept it, though every now and again he would feel a tugging from the inside, as if the black water was calling to him.

He never told anyone else what had happened at the riverbank, not even his sister. As he grew older he wondered, more than once, if the whole thing hadn’t just been some strange dream. Maybe he’d wanted a boy his own age to play with so badly he’d made one up.

The conclusion didn’t feel quite right. But then, what was the alternative? He told himself that some things were better left alone.

.

“Flicker’s run off,” his sister sobbed when he asked her what was wrong.

Shisui sighed. The stray cat his sister had adopted after their mother died had never liked being kept inside.

“He’ll be back, Natsu,” he said. “He always wanders back, you know that.”

“Not this time,” she managed, wiping her nose with a filthy sleeve. Shisui frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw him. He ran into the woods.” The last word dissolved into a fresh round of sobs.

A slight chill went down Shisui’s back. He hadn’t been near those trees since he was a young boy, almost ten years ago now. Long enough that he could almost ignore the niggling feeling that he’d left something behind there.

That something was calling out to him.

He’d promised his mother, he thought numbly.

But then, he argued with himself, he’d also promised her that he would look after Natsuko and protect her happiness. She was his little sister, his only living family. What kind of brother would he be if he threw up his hands and let her cry?

“I’ll get him back for you,” he heard himself say.

Natsuko jerked up, startled out of tears, her eyes wide and fearful.

“But the forest,” she stammered, “you can’t—”

But he was already out the door, and the calling, the _yearning_ in his head felt like it let out a long-held sigh of relief.

.

His feet took him to the river more quickly this time. It didn’t make sense—he’d only been there once—but Shisui didn’t question it. He focused on calling for Flicker.

It should have been the other way around, he knew. He should have been more concerned about his sister’s cat than finding his way back to the most dangerous place in the forest, but he couldn’t help it. Something in him had woken up when Natsuko mentioned this place. He needed to know why.

Before long he heard the gentle sound of rushing water, and then there it was: the black river. Only Shisui wasn’t alone on its bank this time.

Halfway out of the water was a young man, his pale fingers nestled in the black fur of Natsuko’s cat. Flicker nuzzled his fingers. Shisui could hear him purring from where he stood.

“You shouldn’t swim there,” he blurted. “It’s dangerous.”

The swimmer looked up, and Shisui’s breath caught. He knew those eyes.

“I know,” the river boy said.

Shisui stared, drinking it all in—the darkness of the water against the boy’s skin, which was just a shade too pale in the low light of the clearing; long black hair pooled wetly over the boy’s shoulders and chest like spilled ink; and those eyes, as dark as the river and so deep they seemed to pull him in.

The river boy’s long fingers stopped moving in the cat’s fur. He tilted his head as the water rushed around him.

“Is this yours?” he asked.

“It’s my sister’s cat,” Shisui answered. Then, “You’re using your real voice this time.”

The river boy shrugged. The movement looked more elegant on him than it had any right to. “I can speak with or without using my mouth. I chose to use it this time.”

Shisui willed himself not to pay any special attention to his mouth. His own lips felt as dry and cracked as his throat (probably from calling for the cat, he reasoned); he licked them before he spoke again, not missing the way the river boy’s eyes followed the motion.

“What’s your name?”

The river boy blinked, as if he’d been expecting something different.

“Itachi,” he said after a moment.

“Itachi,” Shisui repeated. The name tasted familiar on his tongue, though that made no sense. “I’m Shisui.”

“You are polite. People don’t normally give me their names.”

“Why not?”

“They fear I might do something…untoward with the knowledge.” Itachi’s eyes glittered, as if he were laughing somewhere deep inside. “Fortunately for you I have no power with names. Shisui.”

The sound of his name in Itachi’s voice sent a shiver down Shisui’s spine that had nothing to do with the breeze. He drew closer to the riverbank and knelt down beside a still-purring Flicker. He was close enough to Itachi that he should have felt warmth radiating from his skin, yet he felt nothing. Somehow that didn’t frighten him.

“You aren’t afraid,” Itachi remarked, as if reading his thoughts. “Of this place. Or of me.”

“The forest has never hurt me,” Shisui said. “It’s protected me. And you…you helped me, once. I don’t know if you remember.”

“The lost boy.”

“That’s right.” It did seem right that Itachi would remember him. Shisui swallowed. “I kept my promise. It took me a while, but I kept it.”

Something flickered across Itachi’s face. “Not yet.”

“What do you mean?”

Itachi seemed to hesitate. Then he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter right now. I am patient, and you have things you must do.”

“Like what?” Shisui asked softly.

Itachi looked pointedly between them.

It was harder than it should have been to drag his eyes away from that black gaze. Shisui looked down at Flicker, a suddenly unwelcome reminder of why he’d come to the forest in the first place.

“You came here to do someone a kindness,” Itachi murmured.

Shisui met his eyes again. “What about you? Aren’t you lonely here? I thought…”

Itachi stared at him. His eyelashes were wet, like the rest of him, with river water.

“Why should that matter?” he said at length. “You will return sooner or later.”

It seemed so obvious when he said it. “I will,” Shisui agreed. “I promised, remember?”

Itachi’s expression shuttered, abruptly closed itself off. Shisui hated that; he didn’t understand what he’d done wrong.

But Itachi was right. Natsuko would be frantic if he didn’t come home soon, scared more for her brother than for her cat, and he didn’t want to make her cry anymore. Reluctantly he scooped Flicker up in his arms and stood.

“You will find your way more easily this time,” Itachi said. He didn’t meet Shisui’s eyes.

“I thought so,” Shisui replied. Awkward, he stepped toward the edge of the clearing and stopped.

Itachi was still there when he turned around. A relieved laugh threatened, but Shisui held it back.

“I knew I didn’t dream you,” was all he said before taking his leave.

.

The call was stronger this time, he noticed it right away—the pull in his chest as he tried to sleep, worked the harvest fields, ate food that seemed less flavorful than it had before; and underneath it all was a soft bubbling, the rushing sound of the river that never left his ears.

Even that was not as bad as the thoughts of Itachi. He couldn’t get the river boy out of his head; pale slick skin and black eyes haunted his dreams, and Shisui never woke feeling well rested.

He held out a week.

When he broke he did so in the middle of the night, having woken in a cold sweat from dreams of the river and long cold fingers and a cold mouth.

Shisui slipped from their little house without waking his sister. The village was asleep and a bright full moon gave him light; there was no better time to sneak away unseen.

This time the cool of the forest felt like a homecoming. The breath of the trees was lush on his skin, and the lack of sound seemed more restful than unnerving. His feet carried him back to the river faster than either of the other times.

Itachi was waiting for him, moonlight dappling his skin.

“You lasted longer than I thought,” he said.

“Can you ever leave the water?” Shisui asked.

Itachi looked at him for a long time.

“Once,” he said finally. “Only once.”

Shisui didn’t need anything more than that. In three long strides he’d crossed the clearing, kneeling by the water to take Itachi’s face in his hands and kiss him long and deep.

He thought distantly that the dream had been wrong: Itachi’s mouth was warm, so very warm that Shisui felt like he was burning from the inside out.

.

Shisui had brought a blanket from his own bed, in foolish hope, and he spread it across the forest floor. When he turned, Itachi was pulling himself from the water.

He didn’t know what he had been expecting—the legs of a fish? Something else monstrous?—but Itachi was shaped just like any other man, down to the long pale legs. He stood calmly under Shisui’s gaze, naked, the whole of him dripping wet and limned in pale light.

The yearning in Shisui’s head reached a breaking point. He pulled Itachi close and kissed him again, his hand cupping the back of Itachi’s head, fingers tangling in his long wet hair as Itachi’s tongue slipped into his mouth. A shudder ran down the length of his body; vaguely he noticed Itachi’s fingers expertly undoing the ties of his shirt, his breeches, until they were skin to skin.

A moan broke free of his throat when Itachi pulled away, but he was only lowering himself to the blanket. And then he reached for Shisui to pull him down as well.

Shisui paused, taking in the sight of those black eyes—eyes as deep as the river and deeper, ancient and young all at once, utterly inhuman and captivating.

He wanted nothing more than to drown in them.

He let Itachi drag him to the ground, let the river boy guide his movements. If you didn’t look at him too hard, Itachi seemed as human as anyone—the water on his skin dried even as sweat came to replace it; his touch was as warm as the river was cold. He was warm inside as well, and cried out when Shisui pressed into his body.

Shisui lost himself to it, all of it, the noises they gave to the forest—skin slapping against skin, Itachi’s soft breaths and murmurs against his ear, his own grunts and moans as they moved together. It had never felt this good with anyone, he thought distantly; it was too much, too fast, no matter how hard he tried to make it last, and suddenly he was burying his face in Itachi’s neck to smother his cry of release.

Itachi was still hard, wide-eyed and flushed, so Shisui crawled down to take him in his mouth. The river boy let out a noise of surprise, his fingers gripping Shisui’s hair. That felt good too; Shisui groaned around the cock in his mouth and saw Itachi’s head drop back against the blanket, his eyes falling closed. He came with a high keening sound like the birdsong that didn’t seem to exist here.

Shisui swallowed and pulled himself up to lie alongside Itachi. The river boy let out a contented sigh.

_Only once_, Itachi had said. Shisui wondered how much time that gave them. He was beginning to ask the question when Itachi put a finger to his lips.

“Sleep,” he said. “I will watch over you.”

Shisui kissed him again in answer, brief and soft. His eyes were already closing.

“Kept my promise,” he mumbled.

Itachi said nothing out loud. Shisui heard the response anyway: _Not yet._

He was too tired to think. But just before he slept he felt a trembling mouth press one last kiss to his forehead, and for a moment he wondered.

.

The call of the river grew harder to ignore after that. Sometimes Shisui found he couldn’t focus on what others in the village were saying, so loud was the sound of rushing water in his ears.

He went back to the river night after night. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway, he reasoned, and if his nighttime adventures meant he occasionally fell asleep in the fields and burned his skin bright red, what of it? Why should he try to resist the call at all? He’d had good reasons once, he knew, but he couldn’t remember what they were anymore.

Every time he returned to the river Itachi was waiting. Every time he looked sadder and sadder.

Shisui didn’t understand. “I’m keeping my promise!” he snapped once, lack of sleep making him sharp. “Are you still angry with me for taking so long, is that it?”

Itachi had gone stone-faced and silent, the way he did sometimes, and Shisui had stormed home earlier than usual that night.

He felt Natsuko’s eyes on him more often than usual. She knew he hadn’t been quite the same since he brought home her cat, and once she asked carefully if Shisui had a lover he was visiting at night.

It would have been easier if he had. Natsu herself had a suitor in the village; it would have been so much simpler if Shisui had one as well. But Itachi hadn’t allowed so much as a kiss since that night on the forest floor, and as far as Shisui could tell he’d been serious about only having one opportunity to leave the water.

The thought always made him feel both warmed and saddened at the same time. It was why he could never stay frustrated with Itachi for long, despite his reticence and his strange silences.

Day after day he dodged his sister’s questions and the worried looks of the other villagers. More and more it felt as if his real life didn’t begin until night fell, when he could sneak away to the river and the boy who waited for him there.

.

“I was like you once,” Itachi said one night.

Shisui, braiding Itachi’s wet hair for lack of anything better to do, almost missed the words.

“Like me?” he asked.

“Human.”

Shisui looked up sharply.

“It wasn’t that long ago,” Itachi continued. “I was very young and didn’t know any better, so I came too close to the water and fell in. The riverfolk came to me then. They offered me a choice: become like them, or drown.”

His fingers had stopped moving in Itachi’s hair.

“How old were you?” he managed.

“Old enough to know the difference between life and death,” Itachi said, his mouth quirking without humor. “Old enough to think I preferred the former.”

He didn’t seem inclined to say anything more. Shisui slowly began braiding again.

“Why tell me this now?” he asked.

Itachi paused a moment before he answered.

“I know now that I was too young to be given such a choice,” he said quietly. “As you were too young to make the promise that you did. I would release you from it if I could.” He took a breath. “I want you to stop coming here.”

Shisui abandoned the braid. He pulled back to get a better look at Itachi’s face and saw that the river boy was avoiding his eyes.

“Why?” he asked, hard as stone. “What will happen if I don’t?”

Itachi said nothing.

“_Itachi_,” Shisui pressed.

Itachi looked him in the face again. His expression was impossible to read, but his pale hand reached for Shisui’s face and cupped his cheek.

“It would be so easy,” he said softly. “Do you understand? I could pull you in right now, if I wanted to.”

Their mouths were so close. Shisui felt his eyes closing instinctively, memories of heat and closeness pulsing through him.

“Then do it,” he whispered.

Suddenly Itachi’s touch was gone, and so was his nearness. Shisui opened his eyes to see Itachi had pulled away from the river’s bank to drift somewhere near its center. He looked exhausted—more than that, he looked angry.

“If you return again,” Itachi said coldly, “if you do not resist, if you come into my arms and let me pull you down, you will die.” His eyes were sad. “And when the water fills your mouth and lungs I will give you a choice, Shisui, the same choice I was given. But it is no choice at all.”

.

For a time, Shisui pretended to ignore the call.

He focused hard on the way people’s lips moved; that way he could understand what they were saying even when he couldn’t hear over the angry roar of the river. Trying to sleep was useless, but he gripped the sheets so tightly he tore holes in them and did not get out of his bed. He worked hard in the fields, laughed with his sister, fed Flicker, and did not dream.

The water was patient, he knew. Rivers were more patient than most, enough to wear a slow tread in the earth wherever they went. He doubted he would be able to resist it forever. The roaring in his ears grew louder and louder.

Somehow, though, that was not the hardest thing.

There was something else pulling at him, and Shisui found that the memory of Itachi was far harder to ignore than the call of the water. He missed the river boy’s voice, his careful way of speaking; he thought constantly of dark eyes and pale fingers on his skin, leaving a burning trail wherever they touched.

He had once thought the river clearing a dark and chilly place. Now it was the village that felt sapped of its color and warmth, flat like a picture in a book. He longed for the cool dark of the forest. More than that—he longed for a warmth that no one else could give him.

But the drowning…

Furious waters lashed against the insides of his mind. Shisui steeled himself.

_Not yet, not yet._

.

His sister married her beaming suitor not quite a year from the night Shisui had last spent in the forest. Their wedding was simple and lovely, strewn with flower garlands and filled with laughter.

When she had gathered the last of her things to take to her new husband’s home, Natsuko threw her arms around Shisui’s neck and buried her face in his shoulder.

“I hope you can be this happy too someday,” she whispered.

Shisui hugged her tight, memorizing this image of his sister—beautiful in her joy—and said nothing.

That night, alone in the little house that had been theirs, he took stock. He left food for the cat, who belonged with Natsuko anyway, and then he slipped away.

The moon was full again, so his way was well lit. Not that it mattered; by now Shisui could have navigated the forest blindfolded. His heart raced as he stepped through the trees and entered the clearing.

There was the river, its black waters unchanged even after his long absence.

And there was Itachi, still more beautiful than anything Shisui had ever seen.

“You lasted longer than I thought,” Itachi said, sounding resigned.

“I usually do,” Shisui replied.

He smiled a little, but Itachi’s unhappy expression didn’t budge.

“You made me a promise,” he said, “but there is no need for you to keep it right away. I will still be here when you are old and grey.”

“Will you still want me then?” Shisui asked.

Itachi didn’t take the bait. “You could live your life. You could marry, raise children, see your sister grow old. When all of that was done, I would have you.”

“But I want you now.”

Itachi fell silent, staring at him in that way that meant Shisui had done something unexpected. Shisui took advantage.

“It wasn’t the river that brought me back here,” he said. “You’re right, I could keep ignoring it if I really wanted to. But you…”

His throat tightened as he stepped forward to kneel on the riverbank. He didn’t think it was water he craved this time. Itachi didn’t move as Shisui brushed a finger over his cheek, but Shisui thought he saw something fighting to surface in those bottomless eyes—hope, or fear, or both.

“I’ve loved you since I was too young to know what it meant,” he said softly. “I made that promise to _you_, not the river. Let me keep it now.”

Itachi’s eyes widened, his expression blown open in disbelief. For a moment Shisui could see everything laid painfully bare: the years of solitude, of self-loathing, of loneliness. The _want_ that underscored all of it, so deep and fierce it made him shiver.

“You have to be certain,” Itachi told him. “Once you make this choice, there is no turning away from it.”

There was no answer but to kiss him, so Shisui did, crushing their mouths together with such force that it took very little for Itachi’s arms to wrap around his neck and pull him into the water.

The river was cold, but Itachi’s mouth was warm. Shisui clung to that even as the water soaked into his clothes, his skin; it filled his ears and his nose and rushed over his head as Shisui closed his eyes against the sting. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think, and for a second he almost panicked.

But then a voice came into his head as it had all those years ago, soothing and familiar.

_Choose_, Itachi said.

And for the first time Shisui found that he could answer back in kind:

_I chose a long time ago._


End file.
